Re: documentation [was Re: logging]

[Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com>]

Craig wrote:
> > > On a side note, I noticed that jitterbug is no longer being maintained.
> > "Maintained" is an interesting word, in open source. The source code is
> > available, and it's completely under our control. We've tailored it to
> > do what we want it to do. As such, I don't think you can call it
> > unmaintained.
>
> I find this probably the most ironic of your entire message. You are
> critisizing me for, in essence, being lazy and not reading the docs or
> knowing how to find information. If you go to the OpenLDAP ITS main page;
>
> http://www.openldap.org/its/
>
> There is a link for Jitterbug at the bottom. (I only point this out,
> because I don't know if this link is the "correct one". It is simply the
> one list on your web pages.)
>
> http://www.samba.org/jitterbug/
>
> At the top of that page, there is the following statement:
>
> 	JitterBug project suspended
>
> 	The JitterBug project is no longer being actively maintained.
>
> Realizing that people are busy, I was *merely* pointing this fact out.
> Nothing more.

My response was not a criticism. Merely stating a fact that simply because the 
author of an open source program stops releasing updates for it doesn't make 
it suddenly stop working; it doesn't suddenly become unusable. Tridge and I 
had a laugh over this at the last Samba workshop; the irony isn't lost on 
anyone. The beauty of open source is that it doesn't matter what the author of 
a program does or doesn't do - if some revision of their code is useful to 
you, you can use it indefinitely. Whether someone else is maintaining this 
code is somewhat irrelevant since we're already maintaining our own copy 
independently, and doing exactly what we want with it.

> In the end, I was asking a pretty simple question and letting you know
> what I found difficult. I was very clear that I was NOT (again, let me
> say it twice so maybe you will actually *SEE* it... ***NOT***)
> criticizing the docs or the web pages. I was just trying to suggest a
> possible improvement.

Sure. And that feedback is appreciated, and Gavin's reply already said as 
much. I think you're reading too much into the rest of my emails.

> In the future, I will be much more careful about giving any kind of
> feedback to the OpenLDAP community.
--
  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.  http://www.symas.com
  Director, Highland Sun        http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
  Chief Architect, OpenLDAP     http://www.openldap.org/project/